All the King's Horses
by cardiogod
Summary: What if Booth hadn’t stepped in front of Brennan in time to catch Pam Nunan’s bullet? What if Pam had hit her target? NOW COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1

Title: All the King's Horses

Author: cardiogod

Rating: PG-13

Word Count: About 1000

Pairing: Booth/Brennan

Spoilers: Wannabe in the Weeds and Pain in the Heart

Disclaimer: All things "Bones" belong to FOX, Hart Hanson, and Kathy Reichs. I'm just having fun.

Summary: What if Booth hadn't stepped in front of Brennan in time to catch Pam Nunan's bullet? What if Pam had hit her target?

Author's Note: This is my first attempt at a multi-chapter fic; I've never written anything this large-scale before and I'm slightly terrified of such a big departure from the little one-shots that I'm used to. I have the second part written, awaiting beta, and the third is in-progress. I'm estimating five parts in total. I have a direction, I know where I'm taking this story, so there is very little danger of this one dropping off before it's completed. Hopefully.

Longest author's note ever. I'm chatty when I'm nervous. A shout out and many thanks to my lovely beta, obrien_blue, who told me that this was worth pursuing and who pointed out all the parts that sounded wonky.

That said, I give you "All the King's Horses."

-----

He is watching her and she is mesmerizing.

It's like nothing he's ever seen before, not from her, such unadulterated joy. There are no bodies, no murders, no broken hyoids or defense-wound phalanges. There are no killers, no psychopaths, no suspects, no witnesses. And still, in the absence of her favorite things (she really does like defense-wound phalanges), she seems happy.

The room is loud and boisterous and it suits his mood, and while he will never admit it out loud, especially with Sweets standing right there, just itching to psychoanalyze something, he loved Cyndi Lauper when he was a kid too. Hey, it's not like he chose to listen to her, his mom just played that stuff a lot when she was doing dishes in the kitchen and avoiding his dad. It doesn't mean anything. You're surrounded by something that often, it grows on you.

Kind of like Bones.

She's gonna be good at this, he knows she is. She's Bones; she's good at everything. Except, he thinks with a wry grin, pop culture references and throwing a bowling ball. Man, she was bad at that. She rationalized her gutterballs, saying something about angles and centrifugal force that went right over his head; he just thought she sucked and was happy that he was finally better than her at something.

But the singing thing, that she could probably do. She opens her mouth enough to nag at him, he imagines she could probably use it for other things as well. (Mind out of the gutter, Seeley.)

She looks for a minute like she's either going to kill him or kiss him (he hopes for the latter) before she shimmies out of her jacket, grabs the microphone, and proceeds to prove to him why her mother said that she could beat out an 80s pop star in a vocal battle to the death.

God he loves this, loves her, loves seeing her like this.

The beat is infectious, she is beautiful, and he is moving along with her, raising his lighter to the sky like a toast to her, to all of the parts of her that he knows and all of the parts, like her newfound Cyndi Lauper mode, that he is just discovering.

He senses more than hears Cam and the squints laughing, but he watches her, unable to tear his eyes from the laughing, singing, bouncing figure in front of him. Making her grin like this is quickly becoming his new life-goal. Putting away murderers to atone for his violent past was great, fulfilling, validating, but it had nothing on Bones' smile.

He is watching her and she is mesmerizing.

He doesn't see Pam Nunan enter the bar.

He doesn't hear Pam Nunan call his name.

He doesn't hear her impassioned pleas to turn around, to stop watching, to see her. Not Bones, but her.

Her last "Seeley" registers in his brain and he wonders what that noise is. Bones doesn't call him by his first name.

He tears his eyes from his partner and sees the gun, sees the bang in a flash of red, sees the bullet flying out of the chamber, menacing and alive.

No.

No.

Nonononono.

He stands. He is not quick enough.

The last slurred note of "fun" is punctuated by the breath leaving her lungs as she stumbles backwards into the piano, the keys crashing a loud dissonant chord that echoes through the pandemonium.

No.

Nonononono.

This is not happening. This can't be happening.

Bones.

He is beside her before he knows that he's moved.

Pressure on the wound. Compress. Stop the bleeding. Prevent shock. GSW. Gun shot wound to the chest. Call for backup. Whatever you do, don't let up pressure on the wound, Sergeant.

He'd seen plenty of his buddies get shot in Kosovo.

This is different.

Pressure. Keep the pressure.

There is so much blood. Blood slipping from her into him, through his fingers, through his shirtsleeves, through the pain that threatens to overwhelm him, as though he were the one shot rather than her.

"Seeley!" Another cry of his name and he finally understands the desire to kill because Pam Nunan is looking at him and Bones is mouthing at him like a fish, trying to talk but unable phonate anything other than gasping breaths.

He never thought he'd see the day when she could be rendered speechless.

Gun out of holster. Pam Nunan. Remove safety. Pull trigger.

He doesn't watch her go down because Bones is still bleeding.

So much blood.

"Come on Bones, come on. I'm right here."

This can't be happening.

"Come on, Bones. You can do this. You're gonna be fine."

She is mouthing his name, God, his _name_, and he presses harder on her wound. He's not going to let her die.

"Come on Bones. Come on."

He's not going to cry because she is going to be fine. She's going to be fine.

"You're gonna be fine, I promise. You're gonna make this. Come on."

He pulls her to him, pressing his face into her neck in a fervent prayer.

He'll say Our Fathers and Hail Marys and go to church every day for the rest of his life if he can keep her with him.

"Come on, Bones. Stay with me, come on."

"Stay with me, Bones."

"Stay with me."

_Don't leave me._

He sees the moment when the life leaves her eyes.

-----


	2. Chapter 2

Title: All the King's Horses

Author: cardiogod

Rating: PG-13

Word Count: About 2400

Pairing: Booth/Brennan

Spoilers: Wannabe in the Weeds and Pain in the Heart

Disclaimer: All things "Bones" belong to FOX, Hart Hanson, and Kathy Reichs. I'm just having fun.

Summary: What if Booth hadn't stepped in front of Brennan in time to catch Pam Nunan's bullet? What if Pam had hit her target?

Author's Note: Many thanks to Obrien_blue for keeping me in line.  Thanks to all of you, too, for your wonderful and encouraging comments. They are very much appreciated.

-----

"You're wrong."

He is blunt, disbelieving.

There's no way this is possible.

"I'm very sorry for your loss, Agent Booth."

He inhales. He exhales.

This is not happening.

----

"What do you mean I can't see her?"

He is livid.

"Yeah, what do you mean we can't see her?"

Angela is livid too.

The doctor stares at him, then at her, and Booth is ready to punch him out when he puts a hand on his shoulder and tries to look sympathetic. He glares and the hand disappears.

"I'm sorry, Agent Booth, Ms. Montenegro, but it is our strict hospital policy here at Georgetown Memorial that patients in the ICU cannot be seen by non-family members."

His protest is loud and immediate and accompanied by his badge shoved in the guy's face. "I'm FBI. She's my partner."

"Non-family members, Agent Booth."

He wants to tell him that he is her brother, her cousin, her lover, her husband just so he will let him see her. But he is none of those things and the doctor (who can't be a day older than Sweets) knows that. He wants to tell him that there is more than one kind of family, but he won't understand the sort of family that he has with her.

"She's my lesbian lover and if you don't let me in to see her, I'll call my lawyer and have him sue your hospital for all it's worth."

Angela is brilliant, he thinks.

"Oh," an afterthought, "and he's my third cousin, so that makes him Dr. Brennan's third cousin once removed so he should be allowed to come in too."

The doctor smirks a little and Booth has to resist the urge to remove the grin with his fist. He needs to see her. Now. Because the last time he saw her she wasn't breathing and there was blood everywhere and he can't let that be the last image he has of her.

"While I'm sure Dr. Brennan appreciates your concern, it is really best that she be alone right now. The EMTs were able to restart her heart in the ambulance, but she needs surgery and before they can take her in, her vital signs need to stabilize or else we run the risk of having her crash on the operating table."

His anger and his need to see her do not dissipate, but he knows that, rationally, the doctor is right.

_Think rationally, Seeley. Logically. Use your head, not your heart. _

Booth wonders how many times this kid has given this speech. Is this comparable to the one he gives when he and Bones identify a set of remains? The one that comes almost automatically now, though he still means every word of it? Is that how this prepubescent doctor remains so calm? The same way that Booth can retain his own cool when speaking to loved one? Just practice?

No, the two situations are nothing alike. Completely different. Not even close.

Because Bones is not dead. Bones is not going to die. Bones is going to be fine.

Angela mutters something that is probably not very nice and stalks off, presumably to find Hodgins who had stayed behind to park the car.

Booth thanks the doctor even though he does not feel particularly thankful and, with a last look down the hallway, he turns and retreats to the waiting room.

To wait.

-----

There is an FBI agent by her bedside when she wakes, though it is not the one she expects.

"Good, Dr. Brennan, you're awake."

Why is Cullen here?

"How are you feeling?"

"Confused."

She doesn't like what the drugs (she assumes that she's on drugs since her level of physical discomfort is relatively low) do to her brain. From her surroundings, she can deduce that she is in a hospital, probably Georgetown Memorial from the looks of it, but beyond that, things are fuzzy and blurred, and she doesn't know why she's here and why Booth isn't with her.

"Where's Booth?"

Her concern mounts immediately as she considers the possibilities. She has been in the hospital numerous times and he has never not been here. Sometimes with Angela, sometimes with Zack, sometimes alone, but he has never not been here. Something is wrong.

"Is he-"

"Agent Booth is fine, Dr. Brennan. He is in the waiting room."

Another agent steps forward, holding her gaze evenly. He is tall, approximately 190 centimeters, and his face is unusually symmetrical and she wonders briefly what his skull must look like under all that flesh and soft tissue. Wide set ocular cavities, flat, long cheekbones, high brow ridge. Beautiful.

"What's going on?" She manages to keep the question even and controlled even though she feels her body wanting to descend into sleep. The fuzziness is pressing in on her temples, seductively curling around her but she refuses to give in. She has spent years honing her willpower, her stoicism, her strength. She will not let it fail her now.

"What is the last thing you remember?" the not-Cullen agent asks her.

Booth. She remembers Booth. Always Booth.

Leaning over her, holding her, begging her not to leave him. She remembers this. The memory is as hazy as everything else right now, but is there. His eyes bore into hers and he is frantic, possessed, desperate.

She remembers the pulsing of her blood, hard and throbbing and warm.

"Don't leave me," he tells her.

She remembers the effort it took to keep her eyes open.

"We were at the Checker Box," she says, narrowing her eyes to focus her gaze on a spot on the wall so that she could concentrate.

"I think I was shot."

Cullen nods. "Yes, by Pam Nunan, who had become fixated on Agent Booth."

"Why are you here?"

The other agent speaks again. "Dr. Brennan, my name is Special Agent Daniel Finley. Do you remember a man named Eddie Hasko? He was a suspect in a murder case you worked on three years ago."

Ribs with unusual curf marks, possibly made by multiple instruments. Cause of death, blunt force trauma to the left side of the cranium. Mandibles removed. Three females, one male, 25-35 years of age, two Caucasian, one African American, one Asian. High profile. The children of US Senators. All had fought back, evidenced by trauma to the radius and distal phalanges.

"Yes, I remember."

Hasko worked for the florist that delivered flowers to the churches in the DC metropolitan area. There had been traces of pollen in all four victims head wounds, and all three attended churches that Hasko's company delivered to. The head wounds were consistent with the shovel found in Hasko's shed.

The evidence had been circumstantial but compelling, and Caroline Julian had been certain that they would have gotten a conviction had Hasko not flown the coup.

She's pretty sure that "flown the coup" is not the proper phrase, but Booth is not here to correct her.

"Senator Mathis is really leaning on us catch this guy, and we have developed a strategic plan of action to lure him out of hiding."

She doesn't know what this has to do with her. She can't very well examine bones from her hospital bed. She's tried that before and had found the hospital administrators to be exceedingly uncooperative.

"How does this involve me?"

Cullen looks at her.

"You're going to die."

-----

She's going to die.

That's the only reason this can be taking so long.

She's going to die.

He looks at his watch again. 6:17am. She'd been in surgery for six hours. Six. Six hours of waiting and pacing and worry and not being told anything because he wasn't the hospital's goddamn socially-sanctioned definition of family.

She's going to die.

She can't die.

"Seeley, for gods' sake, sit down."

Cam. She always had been cranky in the early morning.

"I know you're worried about her. We're all worried about her. But wearing a hole in the linoleum isn't going to make her any better any faster. So just sit down and brood like the rest of us."

The squints are in varying positions around the waiting room in varying states of exhaustion. Angela and Hodgins are on the small, sterile loveseat. She is sleeping and he is looking at him like "Sorry, man, but I'd do as Cam says or she'll hurt you."

Sweets is there, asleep with his head propped up on his arm, his lanky figure crammed into the hospital chair. In another scenario, the image might almost be comical.

But it isn't because she's going to die.

He collapses into a chair, defeat overwhelming him. It's not fair.

She hadn't even gotten to start the third verse.

The image of her standing up there, singing and bouncing and laughing that had, only hours ago, made him blissfully happy now makes his chest clench.

If he had reacted faster. One more second. One more second and he could have turned around and stopped Pam Nunan from firing her gun. He could have shot first. He could have stepped in front of her bullet. One more second and Bones wouldn't be in surgery and he wouldn't be having visions of her funeral.

The scene plays though his mind like an old home movie, and each time he watches it, he catches something new, something he could have done differently, one little thing that would have prevented this outcome. One thing. A million things.

One more second.

She had promised him once that he could hug her when he got scared.

He's scared now.

-----

"That sounds reasonable."

"Good."

"Under one condition," she stipulates. Their plan makes sense. It is rational, it is logical, it is all things that appeal to her. She is to pretend to be dead in order to lure Hasko out of hiding. At their last run in, he swore that he would dance on her grave at her funeral and now they were going to give him that chance.

Cullen was positive that he would show up. He would arrange for a team of FBI agents to wait outside the funeral site until they had visual confirmation from one agent posing as a mourner, at which point the other agents would assume position to apprehend him. She would resurface and go back to life as it was. Simple. Rational. Logical.

"Booth, my father, and Russ must be informed of the situation."

"I'm afraid that will not be possible, Dr. Brennan."

She is suddenly angry. She sits straight up, and if she had the strength to get out of the bed to confront him in that manner, she would. But her wound hurts and the pain is increasing by the second, so she will have to settle for sitting ramrod straight and trying to pin him down with her eyes.

"Then make it possible. I am giving up my entire life for an estimated two weeks so that you can catch a killer you would be unable to otherwise. Informing a few select people is not a lot to ask in this situation."

She feels the fuzz threatening to edge in on her again, but fights it back with sharp words.

"I am immovable on the subject."

"Dr. Brennan, while we understand and are sympathetic towards your concern for your loved ones-"

"And Booth."

"And Agent Booth, it would be best if they are kept out of the loop." He is stern but so is she.

"Agent Finley, if the situation was reversed and Agent Booth was in this bed and not me, I am positive that he would tell me of this plan. I owe him the same courtesy, at the very least. He is my partner."

She is not going to let them do this to him. While she is not exactly sure how Booth would react to the news of her death, she doesn't think that he would be happy about it and it seems unnecessary to her for him to go through that when she is, in fact, (more or less) fine.

He would tell her, if it was him. He would find a way to tell her, to have her told. He tells her all the time about things he's not supposed to, and he would certainly tell her this.

"Agent Booth is a trained FBI agent, he will understand-"

"Booth will _not_ understand, Agent Finley, because he thinks with his heart, however anatomically incorrect that might be."

She is adamant, unrelenting.

Her wound begins to burn, and she eases herself back against the cushions of the bed.

The two men exchange looks and she wishes she was adept enough at human interaction to read the words that went unspoken between them.

"Dr. Brennan, the more people who are aware of this, the more people are in danger. If we were to inform Agent Booth and your family of the situation, their lives would most assuredly be at risk."

"You are free to tell them yourself," Cullen chimes in, "but we highly advise against it. The FBI values Agent Booth's services and would hate to lose such a solid agent because of this."

She thinks.

Telling Booth means he could die.

Not telling Booth means he could kill her when he finds out the truth.

But telling Booth means he could die. She cannot run that risk.

"Okay."

-----

He knows when the doctor approaches that things are not okay.

This is not happening.

Angela is behind him, and Cam, and the other squints. But he is the one the doctor addresses.

"Agent Booth."

He braces himself.

"I am very sorry to have to inform you, but Dr. Brennan did not make it through the surgery."

His head thunders. He hears Angela emit a guttural howl somewhere behind him, but he takes no notice of it. His head thunders and he can feel nothing else.

"You're wrong."

He is blunt, disbelieving.

There's no way this is possible. Hours ago, when she was in surgery, he had had thought she could die. But he never thought she actually would.

He thought he had prepared himself for the worst.

He was wrong.

"I'm very sorry for your loss, Agent Booth."

He inhales. He exhales.

This is not happening.

-----


	3. Chapter 3

Title: All the King's Horses

Author: cardiogod

Rating: PG-13

Word Count: 3100

Pairing: Booth/Brennan

Spoilers: Wannabe in the Weeds and Pain in the Heart

Disclaimer: All things "Bones" belong to FOX, Hart Hanson, and Kathy Reichs. I'm just having fun.

Summary: What if Booth hadn't stepped in front of Brennan in time to catch Pam Nunan's bullet? What if Pam had hit her target?

Author's Note: This was a major, major exercise in learning to write Booth.

She has been officially dead for three days, nine hours and forty-two minutes, and already she is bored.

She was released from the hospital after the second full day, once her surgeon could see that her wound was healing satisfactorily. She had been lucky in that regard; the bullet had gone straight through her lower thorax, cutting through her abdominal muscles but missing most of the major organs. Emergency surgery had repaired damage to her intestines and removed the dead slug from her posterior abdominal wall.

Had it hit two inches to the left, her spinal column would have been damaged and she would have, most likely, wound up paralyzed. She shudders at the thought and wiggles her toes for good measure, though the action tightens her stomach and she winces at the lightning bolt of pain that sears across her. She's opted against taking the prescription painkillers they gave her, favoring intellectual sobriety over a lack of pain.

The FBI has put her up in a government-owned apartment in Georgetown. Her own place will be empty for the two weeks it will take to smoke out Eddie Hasko. Mail will pile up in her mailbox, the Washington Post will sit in a heap on her doorstep, dust will accumulate on her tables and her floors, the dinner dishes that she had left in the sink when she got Booth's message to meet him at the Checker Box would remain undone. It is a strange feeling.

It's not as though she hasn't been away from her apartment before; she has. Two months in Guatemala, ten days in Peru, six weeks in Rwanda, three trekking through Tibet, but these trips had all been voluntary and well-prepared for. Not like this. Nothing like this.

She sits at her desk, laptop in front of her, and she stares at the screen.

If she can't go in to the Jeffersonian to work (and she can't, which bothers her), she can at least get some work done on her novel.

She sits.

One keystroke.

Delete.

Two.

Delete delete.

Three whole words.

Delete delete delete.

Twelve sentences about Kathy and Andy and a dead body in a tub of sludge.

Deletedeletedeletedelete.

She stares blankly at the screen, harsh and white and demanding her attention.

She hates this feeling, the feeling she gets when she's writing and on a deadline and none of the words in her vast vocabulary seem to fit what she's trying to convey. She is a highly intelligent woman. She has multiple degrees, she is regarded as the best in her field, she has had two books on the New York Times bestseller list (which her publisher says is a good thing), and her IQ is well above genius level.

Logically, this should not be so difficult. She has encountered situations much more intellectually-challenging than putting words on paper in a manner that is engaging and entertaining.

Microsoft Word still stares at her, taunting.

Sometimes she wonders why she began writing fiction in the first place. Publishing another text book would have been simpler (though not nearly as lucrative, she'll admit) and it would save her the trouble of hunting for proper adjectives to describe Andy's bare chest.

_Masculine. Well-defined. Toned. Muscled. Proportional. Symmetrical. _

_Booth. _

As often as she reminds him that Andy is a fictional character and not based on him in any manner, she sometimes needs reminding herself.

She shakes the thought from her head. Thinking about Booth is not a good idea. Because if she thinks about Booth, she will wonder how he is, and if she wonders how he is, she will feel the unpleasant twinge of guilt that, though unfounded and illogical, is still present.

She is catching a bad guy. She spends her life catching bad guys, it's what she does, who she is. This is no different.

Except it is. It is different, no matter how many times she tries to tell herself that it isn't. It's different because this time, her friends think she's dead. This time, she is hiding away in an apartment unfamiliar to her instead of in the lab. This time, Booth is not by her side. This time, she has to lie, something she vehemently dislikes, in order to catch the son of a bitch.

She hates Eddie Hasko for this, for making her into a person she swore she'd never be. The person who lies. The person who omits truth. The person who betrays everyone around her.

The person who leaves.

She does not like this feeling.

-----

He has been drunk for three days, four hours, and forty-two minutes. He knows it's a little excessive, but he isn't sure what else to do.

In the army, when you lost a friend, it was customary to spend a night getting shitfaced in your tent with all the rest of your buddies. Then you wake up the next day and continue with your mission as though nothing had happened, as though you hadn't watched a guy you ate breakfast with every morning get blown to bits and pieces by a hand grenade or a bomb on the side of the road or an ordinary bullet.

In the FBI, when you lost a coworker, the tradition was to go to Malone's, the favorite hangout for off-duty agents, to order a shot and ask the bartender to leave the bottle. You got shitfaced, paid your enormous tab, and got up for work the next day, putting on your socks and your Cocky belt buckle like nothing had changed, like the building wasn't going to be just a little bit different without Jeremy Winters hanging around the canteen boasting about his latest sexual conquest, as if anybody else cared what Lisa Nicholson was like in the sack.

There is no protocol to follow when you lose a Bones, so he just kept on drinking because it was easier to live in a stupor than in a reality that didn't include her.

Angela came in to check on him when he was on his twenty-third hour of drunkenness, and he had sent her away and continued drinking. The FBI had called when he didn't come into work on the second day, and he had told them he was taking the week off and continued drinking.

Scotch. Beer. Vodka. Anything he could find.

But now he has run out of booze and he is in no shape to drive to the liquor store to replenish his stash, so he sits on his couch and stares at nothing in particular as he waits for the pain to press in on him.

And it does; it always does.

Everywhere he looks, he feels her.

He sees her smile in the kitchen when he opens the fridge to get a beer and finds it hiding behind a bunch of organic leafy crap that he sure as hell didn't buy for himself.

He sees her confusion in the living room next to his rack of DVDs. "I don't know what that means," she'd tell him over and over and over again and one day he swore to himself that he was going to sit her down and make her watch every disc in his collection so that he doesn't have to explain to her (though he secretly kind of likes explaining things to her) who Fred and Ginger are, or Mulder and Scully, or any number of other things.

He hears her laughter on his couch, and he can't quite recall what it was that he said that was funny enough to cause her throw her head back the way she had.

He smells her perfume in the door frame where they would linger at the end of an evening of paperwork and Thai food (and she would hog all of the mee krob) and he would always have to talk himself out of leaning down and kissing her.

He looks at his gun and he sees her sitting across from him at the Hoover building telling him that she wants her own so that she can shoot people.

He takes his wallet out of his back pocket because it is digging into his backside and he remembers all of the times they had argued about who would pay at the diner.

"I make more money than you, Booth. It is only logical that I be allowed to pay at least my share. Anthropologically speaking, societies are built upon a financial hierarchy and there is no shame in being lower on that hierarchy," she would say.

"Yeah, but I'm the guy," he would argue.

"I have no limits on my per diem," and she would win. That time, anyway.

She is everywhere.

And she is nowhere.

She's not in the kitchen. The vegetables will go rotten because she isn't there to eat them.

She's not on the couch and he'll never have the opportunity to show her the beauty of Monty Python or Animal House or the Terminator movies.

She's not leaning against the door frame and he can't smell her perfume and he can't kiss her because she's gone.

They won't argue over his gun or who pays for lunch or about anthropological significance or his alpha-male tendencies or about the merits of apple pie.

He doesn't know how to handle this.

-----

The big things are what get to her.

She has traveled enough not to be disturbed by changes in minute details; sleeping in a new bed, using a coffee machine that doesn't function quite like hers, the lack of whole wheat pasta in the cabinets, it is all par for the course. She has survived much worse living conditions and though the disruption from her normal domestic routine is inconvenient, it is not what bothers her.

She hasn't been to the lab in a week.

She hasn't touched a bone in eight days.

She hasn't had lunch (or dinner or pie or coffee) at the diner with Booth in nine.

She doesn't know how to quantify her emotional response to the situation. Rationally, she understands why she has chosen to do what she's chosen to do. She knows that the FBI's logic is irrefutable, that Hasko deserves to be in prison, and that she can contribute to the arrest by complying with their request. She knows that there is a time limit on the assignment of two weeks, and that two weeks is not very long (approximately 1/850th of her lifespan to date).

She sometimes (and increasingly moreso, lately) thinks there is a certain disconnect between what she knows and what she feels.

Two weeks is a very brief period- fourteen days, three hundred and thirty-six hours, twenty thousand minutes. It is the average gestation period for a hamster, the time it takes for milk to sour, for her and Booth and her team to wrap up a particularly difficult case (including paperwork). In the larger scheme of things, two weeks is essentially irrelevant.

But even though time is a fixed construct, a universal invariant, she feels it move slower than she ever imagined it could. Minutes drag on into hours, hours drag on into days. There is no reprieve.

She will see Booth and Angela and Hodgins and Zack and even Cam in a week's time, but still, she misses them, a feeling she is decidedly uncomfortable with, particularly regarding Booth, as he is the one she misses most of all.

He is not handling this well, that much she knows. She knows him and she knows that her death would not be a pleasant experience for him. It would not be a pleasant experience for her if he was the one dead, and she is skilled at compartmentalization, whereas Booth is not, so she imagines that it probably feels worse.

He thinks that she is dead.

Dead.

They all think that she is dead.

Despite the fact that she deals in death daily, she is not as prepared for it as she imagined she'd be.

Part of her wants to say that he will be fine, that they all will be fine, wants to undermine the significance of what she's done. It is easier that way, to think that she means nothing to them and that her reported death has little effect on their well-being. It is easier to be insignificant.

But it is not the truth, and she knows that. She is cared for, even loved (though she still does not believe that one human being can promise a lifetime to another; there are too many variables), and that realization knocks her back as swiftly and forcefully as the bullet had when it had entered her body.

She wonders how he must feel, how she would feel if he was dead.

She doesn't want to think about it.

She picks up the phone, dials six numbers, and hangs up.

She knows what it is like to love people and to lose them. She's been walked out on regularly since she was fifteen.

She dials again. Hangs up before completing the call.

She wants to call him. She wants to ease the pain he is feeling, to tell him that it is not necessary, that she is still alive.

But if she tells him, she runs the risk of killing him.

She puts the phone down.

Is this how her parents felt? Keeping her safe by keeping silent? Leaving her in order to protect her?

It isn't easy. It isn't easy to be the one doing the leaving.

She feels her world shift a little bit.

----

It's the small things that get him.

He's tried to wash the coffee cup sitting next to the sink- her coffee cup, the one she always drank from, the one with the bone shaped handle that Parker had gotten him for Christmas last year ("You like bones and coffee, Daddy" was his explanation and Booth had never been sure if he meant Bones, the proper noun, or bones the common noun)- but he can't bring himself to rinse away evidence of her, send her presence in his life down the drain with a stream of lemon-scented bubbles and hot water.

Max wants him to give the eulogy.

A eulogy.

For Bones.

Moments like this threaten to stop his heart.

He cannot count the number of times in the past week and a half that he has forgotten. You would think the death of your partner, friend, whatever she was (it kills him to have to use the past tense in regards to her), would be something you wouldn't forget. But he does sometimes.

He has moments where he thinks of things that he has to tell her, only to remember that he can't. He wakes up some mornings and in the post-alarm-clock haze he looks forward to seeing her at work, only to be greeted by the harsh reality once his head has cleared. When he is in the lab, surrounded by squints, he expects to see her poring over a bone, caressing, delicate, coaxing from it stories and anecdotes and truths. But he doesn't.

Because she is dead.

He relives that night (which is only ever referred to as "that night") every time he closes his eyes. The music is now twisted and off key and demented, the atmosphere not frivolous or jovial, but foreboding, menacing. Her body twists and she sings and her smile is the same. Everything else is different, darker, full of knowledge of what is to come, but her smile is the same happy, joyous thing that he loved.

It haunts him.

He can still feel the bullet whizzing past him, screaming. It is a heartbeat away, a moment, silvery and ephemeral, and red (so very red) and eternal.

He remember his own bullet, burrowing into Pam Nunan, and his only regret is that he hadn't been able to watch the life drain out of her. He had been too busy watching the life drain from Bones.

He hates Pam Nunan. He's never really hated a person before, but he hates her. He wishes she was alive so that he could shoot her again. And again. And again. He'd shoot her a thousand times over if he could because it is her fault that Bones is dead.

Bones is dead.

It is his fault.

He will carry that with him for the rest of his life. It is his fault.

It was just a touch on the shoulder. Innocent. Chaste. Harmless.

It killed her.

_He_ killed her.

He thinks of Max, of Russ. Two hardened criminals who went to pieces before his eyes because something they loved, something precious, was taken from them. He does not see blame in their eyes, but he doesn't have to. He knows it is there.

A touch on the shoulder. A disregard for a warning. A reaction two seconds too late.

His fault.

He should have walked out of the interrogation room, his hands to himself.

He should have listened to Sweets when he waxed philosophic about the danger she and her delusions presented.

He should have kicked her out of his office, should have arrested her, shot her, pinned her down to the desk and cuffed her, anything.

He should have seen her enter the bar.

He should have heard her call his name.

He should have stood up.

He should have protected her.

It was his job to protect her.

He failed.

She is dead.

The idea never really works its way through his head.

She is dead because of him.

Because he loved her.

Because he brought her to the Checker Box.

Because he wanted to see her face as she forgot to be a scientist for a moment and just let go, just had fun.

Because he watched her.

Because he looked at her the way he always looked at her.

Because he was so enamored with her that he didn't look up in time, didn't stand up in time, didn't shoot in time.

It is too much for him to deal with.

He stands up, unable to sit still on his couch.

Why should he be allowed to sit and relax when she can't anymore?

He can run and he can talk and he can eat pie and organic crap and macaroni and cheese. He can go and sit in her office and read the parts of her latest book on her computer. He can joke with Hodgins and Zack and Angela and Cam. He can laugh with them (though none of them have been in a laughing mood). He can go to Limbo and stare at the innumerable crates of bones (they aren't innumerable, she'd tell him, because they are all catalogued and accounted for), just look and absorb the enormity of the room.

He can go to Peru and dig up things if he wanted to. He can watch movies, he can dance, he can sleep and cry and smile and breathe.

She can't. And it is his fault.

He is imbued with fury and anguish and guilt and regret and it is hot, so hot. It burns into him like a branding iron and he knows, viscerally now, what it means to be marked by another person.

Her marks will not fade. Time is not a factor.

And with one swift movement, he picks up the coffee mug, her coffee mug, and hurls it across the room, watching it shatter, like his life, into hundreds of unrecognizable pieces.

-----

Chapter 4 to follow soon!


	4. Chapter 4

Title: All the King's Horses

Author: cardiogod

Rating: PG-13

Word Count: 3100

Pairing: Booth/Brennan

Spoilers: Wannabe in the Weeds and Pain in the Heart

Disclaimer: All things "Bones" belong to FOX, Hart Hanson, and Kathy Reichs. I'm just having fun.

Summary: What if things had gone a little differently at the end of Wannabe in the Weeds? An alternate take on the last two episodes of season 3.

Author's Notes: Mega thanks to my fabulous beta ladies, obrien_blue and zerodetorres, without whom, I'd probably never have made it past part 1 of this story.

-----

It is going to be a beautiful service.

That's what he keeps telling himself.

As if there can be anything beautiful about what he has to do today, about putting her in the ground to decompose like all of the corpses she spent her life studying.

But he stands there, tall and stoic, observing as people gather, determined to do what he can to give her a graceful exit.

He is alone.

Everyone else has someone- Hodgins and Angela have each other, Zack has Hodgins and Angela, Max and Russ have each other. Maybe he has Cam; she has always been his friend and he is grateful for that, but she isn't enough. She isn't Bones.

He slips his hand into his pocket and touches the folded piece of paper that he shoved in there the previous night. He has never had to write a eulogy before. He did not like it very much.

He looks at her coffin (Christ, her _coffin_) and at the headstone that they will place over it. Max chose the coffin, dark cherry wood and gold trimmings. It doesn't look like her, he doesn't think, but he won't argue. He's not sure that any coffin, any death house would really look like her.

He chose the headstone. He isn't sure why he was given that detail, but he had found himself standing in a cold stone room staring at slabs of marble and engraving fonts and it had overwhelmed him.

_Dr. Temperance Brennan_

_1976-2008 _

It is simple, unlike her, and it says nothing like "Beloved daughter, sister, and friend," although the funeral home director had tried to talk him into it, or something like it. He had briefly considered it, but couldn't bring himself to tell her that he loved her in death when he had been too cowardly to do so in life.

His regrets are many, but that tops the pile; never letting her know how much she meant to him.

He had a thousand opportunities, a thousand chances, a thousand different times when he had kept the words from bubbling from his lips.

He wanted to say "I love you," and instead he said "Everything happens eventually."

He wanted to say "I need you," but the words that came out were "I knew you wouldn't give up."

He wanted to say "I can't live without you," but what she heard was "You wouldn't even have coffee with me?"

"You mean everything to me" was "Hey Bones, hey, there's more than one kind of family."

"Don't leave me" was "Stay with me, Bones. Stay with me."

A thousand times he could have told her but didn't. A thousand missed kisses. A thousand missed opportunities to tell her, show her, that love exists outside of anthropology text books and chemistry sets. A thousand regrets.

Angela's hand is on his shoulder and he turns to look at her. She is hurting too, he has to remind himself, she's lost someone too.

"She would hate this," he murmurs and Angela just nods.

He had tried to dissuade the FBI from paying for a funeral. Her body, he'd told them, should be donated to science. She would want that. She hated funerals, never understood the point in creating so much fuss for someone who wasn't cognizant of it. She'd much rather her body serve some greater purpose, to help advance the scientific alter at which she'd worshipped.

But Cullen had been adamant, and Booth had felt the sickening ooze of relief flood him because, even though he would've done what she would've wanted and let other scientists hack her into pieces, he thinks a part of him would have died in the process.

"The FBI takes care of its own," the older man had said, "and Dr. Brennan was one of us."

Was.

"Yeah, she'd hate this," Angela is speaking, but he struggled to recognize her words, "but funerals are for the living, not for the dead."

Her voice chokes and he knows she is holding back tears.

"They give us a chance to say goodbye."

He does not want to say goodbye.

There are many people crowding around, waiting for the service to start. Her death was well-publicized, given her position in both the anthropology and the literary worlds. Best-selling mystery-writer gunned down by psycho. It made a good headline.

Best-selling mystery-writer gunned down by psycho while her sniper-trained, gun-toting, alpha-male FBI partner sat by and did nothing. The papers and the news anchors always forgot that last part.

He never does.

He takes a deep breath and takes his place at the head of the casket and prepares himself as best he can.

-----

Anthropologically speaking, the opportunity to observe her own funeral is unique and fascinating.

The people, the flowers (daffodils and daisies and she knows that Booth must have picked them), the decorum. All are marks of the society in which she lived, and of her place in it.

She sits in the back of the FBI van and checks her watch for the fifth time in as many minutes. 11:53. Seven minutes.

Seven minutes and then it would start, and then it would be over and she would be able to breathe again. When she accepted this assignment, she grossly underestimated its difficulty level. She hopes that the next time she is dead, she is not cognizant of it.

"Okay, this is how it's gonna go down," Agent Finley looks at her from the driver's seat of a car that is remarkably like Booth's. She is in the passenger seat, as always, and wonders if all FBI agents are this stubborn about who gets to drive.

"We have four guys over there," he nods to the gravesite, maybe thirty yards away from their parked SUV, "They'll be mourning your death until Hasko shows up, at which point they will stop mourning, cuff his sorry ass, and you will be born again."

"A second birth is physiologically impossible." A beat, "You didn't mean that literally, did you?"

"No, Dr. Brennan."

"I would like to be there when they make the arrest."

He looks at her like she's grown a second head.

"I'm afraid that will not be possible. In case you've forgotten, you're supposed to be dead."

"I am aware of that."

"People will see you."

She needs to be there. She needs to be the one to knock him to the ground, to see his face when he realized that he'd been fooled, needs to be the one to put the handcuffs on him and take his life the way he'd taken hers.

"I am quite adept at hiding in plain sight. I once worked at a mass grave site in Cambodia where-"

"I'm sorry, Dr. Brennan, it's not going to happen."

"Well then you should at least give me a gun."

"What?"

She doesn't know what is so difficult to understand.

"A gun. Preferably a .38, if you have one."

"Why do you want a gun, Dr. Brennan."

"To shoot him."

"To what?"

Is she speaking too fast?

"To. Shoot. Him. So that he doesn't get away. It is advisable to develop a backup plan to ensure the completion of a task in case the original plan fails. If Hasko escapes your men-"

"Hasko will not escape my-"

"If Hasko escapes your men, it is logical to assume that he will run in this direction, given that the other directions are crowded with people. It is also logical to assume that I will have a much better chance at apprehending the suspect if I am armed. Therefore, you should give me a gun."

She angles her body and stares Agent Finley in the eye. He will give her this, she knows he will. Her logic is irrefutable.

"Dr. Brennan, with all due respect, I am not going to give you a gun."

Maybe it's time for a new tactic.

"Booth always lets me have his gun."

"Now we both know that's not true."

"Please?"

They are saved by the interruption of one of the field agents over the intercom. Or, more accurately, Agent Finley is saved because, had he refused her request one more time, the urge to punch him may have overwhelmed her. Why couldn't he see that a gun gave her control and that she needs control right now?

"The service is starting, Dan. No sight of him yet."

She looks out the tinted window at the crowd, at her casket, the flowers. Her eyes land on Booth, and the gravity of what she's done hits her again.

Although she cannot make out his facial features from the distance, she observes the way he holds himself, and it saddens her to see such a proud man hunched over and grieving.

It will be over soon.

That is the only consolation she can offer herself. It will be over soon.

-----

This is taking forever.

He just wants it to be over.

It is painful how long this is taking, how every second drags out like a lifetime and how each of those lifetimes reminds him that she is gone.

There is music (he had half-heartedly requested _Hot Blooded_, but the private joke died on his lips before he could finish the sentence), there are flowers (daffodils and daisies and if he could have, he would've thrown Jupiter in for good measure), there are her fans (he can see why she's on the New York Times Bestseller list) there is her family (Max and Russ and Amy and the two little girls whose names he can't remember), her friends (the Squints and Caroline and an ex-boyfriend or two that he'd just as soon forget).

And there is him, her whatever-he-was (because "partner" feels so damn inadequate right now).

He stands at the head of the casket, like a widower, like a lover, like something he's not and something he is, and waits his turn.

It had been difficult to write.

Painful, but cathartic, in a sense, and for a moment he understood why she had chosen words as her outlet, her way to escape the world.

For the time he sat at her desk (because her desk just seemed appropriate), he could remember all of the good things; the pie he always offered that she never ate, the smiles they'd shared over rotting corpses, the triumph of catching the guys who caused the rotting corpses, the time she cooked dinner for him and spoiled him for Kraft macaroni forever, the way she'd looked at him when he'd given her Jasper, the little smile on her face when she'd kissed him in front of Caroline Julian, the way she'd looked with her father on the steps of the courthouse. There were so many things, and not enough at the same time.

He has been to enough funerals in his life, most for people he didn't know, victims of the crimes he (they) spent his life solving. He has always hated this part.

On a nod from Max, he steps forward.

He really does not want to do this.

But he's pretty sure he doesn't want anybody else to do it either, so it might as well be him.

"Temperance Brennan," he looks at his piece of paper, clears his throat. "Temperance Brennan had a mean roundhouse kick."

There is uneasy laughter from the crowd. He scans them, taking in the faces he knows and the ones he doesn't.

One particular face sticks out to him and he doesn't know why. He can't place it.

"She didn't let anybody get the upper hand on her."

The man he recognizes and doesn't at the same time stands off to the side, a white rose in his hands.

"She valued the truth above everything else, both in the lab and in her life."

It bothers him because he knows who he is. Tall, thinning hair.

He has a bad feeling in his gut.

"She never lied. She was honest, to a fault sometimes. It took almost three years to convince her that telling my eight-year-old son Santa brought him Christmas presents wasn't a mortal sin."

The man smiles.

Click.

He knows.

The eulogy is forgotten as her leaps past her coffin, his hip crashing into the corner. He is three feet past it when he hears the crash. He doesn't turn around, he doesn't want to see.

Hasko tries to bolt, and he is fast, but Booth is faster.

And they are on the ground floor, rolling, struggling, landing blows wherever they hit. He cannot punch him hard enough, quick enough. There is not enough pain in the world to satisfy him.

Her funeral. Her fucking funeral.

The words from a year ago flood him, overtake him. _I'll dance at your funeral, princess. Watch yourself._

He had nearly launched himself through the interrogation room window and was only restrained by Sweets, who reminded him that Bones could take care of herself.

_I'll dance at your funeral. _

How dare he?

He is thinking too much. Hasko gains the upper hand, flipping them over and laying a solid punch to his jaw.

They are no longer on the ground.

Scrambling, angry, desperate. Hasko to get away, Booth to not let him.

The casket is on the ground.

He can't look at it.

He takes another punch.

Jaw.

Cheek.

Shoulder.

Again and again and again.

-----

Mandible.

Zygomatic bone.

Scapula.

Again and again and again.

She can't take it.

She it out of the car and running across the cemetery before Finley can get two words out.

She pushes through the frantic crowd, taking a second to glare at the planted FBI agents, who were aiming their weapons, trying to get a clear shot at Hasko. In that moment, she is glad that they didn't give her a gun because she would probably shoot them for being useless.

Booth and Hasko are still on the ground, fighting for leverage.

One punch.

Another.

She rushes forward, sees the open coffin and the mannequin laying inside of it, and takes advantage. She has always been resourceful.

She wretches the arm from the body just as Booth lands a hard kick to Hasko's stomach, sending him flying backwards. He is within reach.

She swings once.

He dodges her.

Bastard.

Connection.

WHACK.

She hits him once more for good measure.

WHACK.

Just to make sure he is down and not getting up. To make sure that he will be caught so that she can have her life back, so that he will not be able to take it away again.

WHACK.

She is back. She sees her friends.

Her heart races.

Her head throbs.

-----

His head throbs.

His heart races.

Hasko is laying on the ground next to him, unconscious and looking much less threatening than he had a moment ago.

He peels himself off the ground.

He smiles at her.

"Thanks, Bones."

Wait a minute…

"BONES?!"

She answers him, ("Hi, Booth.") like it's the most natural thing in the world and then he is kissing her.

He doesn't know where the impulse came from.

That's a lie. He's had the impulse for years, but he doesn't know why he acts on it now, in front of a lawn full of mourners, standing over an unconscious serial murderer, surrounded by daffodils and daisies and dead people (her favorite things).

But the whys don't matter. She doesn't do 'why,' she used to tell him, she only does 'how.'

He kisses her like his life depends on it because, really, it does. Because, without her, he felt dead.

She returns his kiss eagerly, hungrily, and he pulls her closer to him.

Closer and closer and closer and if it was possible to pull her into him, to absorb her into his skin, his muscle, his bones, he would.

It feels so good and he is struck by how much he missed this, even though he never had it to miss. (Unless you could the Christmas kiss, which he doesn't. Except when he does.)

Her mouth opens to his and he is lost. Lost in the moment, the sensation, her. She is real, so beautifully real, and she is kissing him and he can taste her toothpaste and he thinks he's never been happier, except maybe when Parker was born, but that doesn't count right now.

Because right now there is only her. And him. And tongues and lips and teeth and so much damn heart, he's almost overcome with it.

She grabs his lapels and pulls him closer still and he feels her, touches her hair and her back and her hip and her hand now stroking his cheek, and she is here, she is alive, and he is blindingly, brilliantly happy. She is here, she is alive. She is alive.

Bones is alive.

Hold on.

Bones is alive?

He rips his mouth away from hers, separating with a loud pop, and for a moment he just looks at her, lips parted, eyes bright, breathing shallow and uneven.

Breathing.

She can breathe.

She is alive.

He's pretty sure she's not a zombie, so that only leaves one other option.

She lied.

"Bones."

He pushes her away from him, not hard enough to knock her down, but enough to create the distance between their bodies that he was so desperate to erase only moments before.

The background noise that had been so muted while they kissed bore in on him like a freight train. People rushing to surround her, hug her, touch her. Angela's incredulity. Her father's relief.

She is surrounded now, but she looks only at him.

She looks at him. With her eyes. Eyes that are connected to her brain (maybe not directly, but technical jargon has never been his strong suit). A brain that works. Attached to a heart that works.

He'd felt that heart stop. He'd felt her die.

It had been his fault.

As he stalks off, he hears the last strains of conversation, Hodgins' "Well, that was unexpected" fading with distance and the roar of his own anger.

-----


	5. Chapter 5

Title: All the King's Horses

Author: cardiogod

Rating: PG-13

Word Count: 4000

Pairing: Booth/Brennan

Spoilers: Wannabe in the Weeds and Pain in the Heart

Disclaimer: All things "Bones" belong to FOX, Hart Hanson, and Kathy Reichs. I'm just having fun.

Summary: What if Booth hadn't stepped in front of Brennan in time to catch Pam Nunan's bullet? What if Pam had hit her target?

Author's Note: I can't believe it's finally finished. Many thanks go to obrien_blue, zerodetorres, and tempertemper for holding my hand through this last bit, which was exceedingly difficult.

This whole piece has been a learning experience (I learned that I should really stick to one-shots, for example. Heh.) and I am so grateful to all of you have read and commented with encouragement.

On with the show, I guess.

All the King's Horses, part 5/5.

-----

He is walking and she is following.

They are outside the Jeffersonian.

She feels like she's been chasing him for days.

She has been chasing him for days. Three, to be specific.

Sometimes she thinks they spend their lives chasing each other.

"I said I was sorry, Booth."

"I said I don't care, Bones."

"The Bureau-"

"Since when have you ever listened to the Bureau?"

"They said your life-"

"Not good enough."

"Stop acting all high and flighty with me, Booth-"

"Mighty. High and mighty."

She missed that, him correcting her attempts at colloquialism.

"Yes, stop acting all high and mighty when you know you would have done the same thing."

He spins around, confronting her and she nearly runs into him.

"I would _not_," his voice is hushed, intense. "Absolutely not. No way. I would've made sure you knew. I would never do to you what you did to me."

"What I did to you? Do you think I liked it, Booth?"

"Do you have any idea what it was like, Bones? Picking out a headstone, writing your eulogy? You were dead. _Dead_." His voice cracks a little and his anger dissipates into something else that she cannot identify.

"I thought I'd never see you again. I thought… God, I thought…"

She is tender, gentle. "Do you think it didn't kill me, Booth? Not being able to tell you?"

And just like that, the anger is back.

"But you could have told me. You see this thing here?" He grabs his Blackberry from his pocket. "This is called a telephone. You pick it up, press number two on your speed dial and, presto!"

His mocking hurts her a little and the tightening of her chest is uncomfortable and unfamiliar. He has been angry with her before, but not like this.

"It's not that simple, Booth."

"How complicated could it have been? You. Are. Not. Dead. Seems pretty easy to me."

She doesn't know how to tell him that it wasn't.

She doesn't know how to tell him how many times she had picked up her phone, intending to call him, or how many times she put it down, knowing that if she did, she could be responsible for his death.

She doesn't know how to tell him that she hated it, that she knew it was necessary, but that the logic didn't stop her from hating it.

She doesn't know how to tell him that she missed his smile and his easy laugh and his terrible taste in beer.

She doesn't know how to tell him anything about what she experienced in the two weeks she was dead, but she needs him to know that it wasn't easy for her to deceive him. She wants him to read her like he's always read her and see that.

But he is too angry to be perceptive, and she can't blame him for that.

So instead of telling him things she doesn't know how to say, she tells him what she thinks he would say, if he were in her position.

"Booth, I'm sorry. I know how you must feel-"

He steps in close to her, so close and she can feel his breath on her face and the echoes of their kiss in the cemetery still reverberate through her.

"You have _no_ idea how I feel."

She tries to tell him that she does, that even though her situation was different, she is sure it was no less painful.

Waiting to see their station wagon coming up the driveway.

Asking Russ when Mom and Dad were getting home.

Waking up in the morning, sure that she could smell pancakes coming from the kitchen, but finding nothing there but Russ' bowl of half-eaten cornflakes.

Thinking they were dead. For years. Because that was the only rational, logical explanation. Them leaving her, just because they wanted to, somehow never made sense.

She understands. She knows.

She tries to tell him, but the words don't come. She has never been good at this sort of thing.

He turns his back.

"This conversation is over."

He walks away.

She stares.

-----

He is the only one who does not stare.

He takes her reappearance in stride and hardly blinks when he sees her on his doorstep.

Of course he isn't surprised. Her father is a career criminal, and she has worked in the criminal justice system long enough to know that career criminals are not surprised by much.

He ushers her inside his apartment, hugging her and laughing and offering greetings to which she responds appropriately.

She is not yet used to seeing him in an apartment as opposed to a jail cell, in jeans rather than an orange jumpsuit. She likes it, even though she knows she shouldn't because he really was guilty and she spends her life putting guilty people in jail cells and orange jumpsuits. But with him it is heart and not brain and she is Temperance and not Dr. Brennan and she knows what that means now.

They sit on the couch.

He grins and takes a pack of cards out of his shirt pocket. She wonders if he keeps them in there always, or only when he knows she's coming for a visit.

He deals.

She fidgets.

She is here to tell him something.

_I forgive you _is what she wants to say.

"Booth is angry with me," is what comes out.

"Because of the whole not being dead thing?"

She nods. "Yes, I believe that's why."

Her father puts down his cards and looks at her. "And what do you think about that?"

"I am not entirely sure. While his anger is completely irrational-he knows I was only doing it to catch a serial killer- I understand that irrationality on some level. It is confusing for me."

"He'll come around, honey. That man loves you, he can't stay mad forever."

She blinks.

"Booth doesn't love me, Dad."

"Okay, Tempe. Whatever you say."

"While your words are acquiescing, your tone indicates that you do not believe me."

"Just take my word on it, sweetheart. I know love when I see it."

He smiles kindly and puts his hand over hers. She isn't sure when she became comfortable accepting physical comfort from him, but she finds it reassuring nonetheless.

"Open your eyes a little, Tempe. You'll see it too."

She doesn't have anything to say to that.

Her father thinks Booth loves her.

She doesn't know how to react.

So she changes the subject.

"Do you like being out of prison?"

He laughs. "Do I like being out of prison? Is the sky blue? Do birds sing?"

"Actually, it is a common misconception that birds can sing. It would be more accurate to say that-"

"An expression, Tempe, it's an expression."

"Oh. Yes."

A pause.

"I came here to tell you something."

He eases back, settles into the couch. She sits straight and tall. She always sits straight and tall when she is dealing with important things.

"I figured as much."

She doesn't know how to say this.

She finds that she doesn't know how to say a lot of things that need to be said.

"I have decided to forgive you and mom for leaving me and Russ."

She doesn't know why such a small admission should feel so big.

She continues. There is more to say.

"While I was on my last assignment, I had a lot of time to think. I also experienced some unpleasant emotions associated with lying to my friends and colleagues about my supposed death."

Booth angry with her. Angela crying. Zack looking stunned. The images flood back to her.

"Although I recognize that the two situations are vastly different, I do not think it is unreasonable to generalize the emotional ramifications. Namely, in order to protect the people I care about, I had to deceive them, to leave them, if only in a metaphoric context."

He had been so angry. So angry and so hurt. She didn't know what to say, how to fix it. She still doesn't.

"This proved to be difficult for me, and while I had always believed that leaving Russ and me was easy for you, I am now forced to reconsider my position on the subject."

"It wasn't easy, honey."

She thinks she can see his eyes glisten.

"You left because you loved us. Loved me. And you wanted to keep us safe. My time being dead has shown me a perspective that I had not previously been able to see, and I now understand viscerally why you did what you did."

A breath. A tentative smile.

"Therefore, I forgive you."

Her father grins and moves to hug her. She returns his embrace, pulling back only to tell him one more thing.

"I do not, however, forgive you for robbing banks or killing people and then setting them on fire."

He chuckles.

"Okay, sweetheart."

-----

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

Tap tap.

Exhale.

Inhale.

Blink.

Sideways glance.

Blink blink.

Pause.

Silence.

Another glance.

Nothing.

Anger.

Huff.

Blink blink blink.

"So…"

No response.

"Come on, guys."

She starts to open her mouth to speak, but he shuts her up with a glare and a curt shake of his head.

Blink.

Some matters are private.

"Somebody say something."

Like when your partner goes undercover for two weeks and doesn't bother to tell you that she isn't dead.

He doesn't want to talk about how that makes him _feel_.

What he wants is to get out of here and as far away from her as possible.

What he wants more than that is to get out of here and as close to her as possible, but he's ignoring that part.

If Cullen hadn't threatened him with his job, he wouldn't even be here.

"Great. This is just great."

Silence.

Tap tap.

His foot on the floor.

Blink.

He feels her shift next to him.

Blink.

"We have nothing to say, Sweets."

She breaks the silence and he glares at her again. As long as they kept silent, they were home free. Now that she had spoken, something in her tone or her word choice or some miniscule facial tic would tell Sweets something profound that only a twelve year old could figure out and he'd work his weird psychology mojo and they'd be stuck Talking About It.

He doesn't want to Talk About It.

Because talking about it requires him to Think About It, which he'd like to avoid.

"You've got nothing to say?"

Sometimes Sweets really gets on his nerves.

"Yeah, Sweets. Nothing to say. You got a problem with that?"

A challenge.

Neither man (Sweets is ten, he doesn't really count as a man) speaks, neither looks away.

Go ahead, he dares him, say something.

A pause.

"Yeah." It is small at first, his words, but when he repeats them, he sounds more assured. "Yeah, I do have a problem with that."

Goddamn Sweets. He wasn't supposed to say that.

"So you're trying telling me that, in the past three weeks, you," he points at Brennan, "were shot by a madwoman and have been dead for two weeks, only not really dead, and you," Booth shifts uncomfortably on the loveseat, "shot and killed said madwoman and then had to confront some mega-serious feelings you'd rather ignore regarding Dr. Brennan, and nobody has anything to say? Really, people? Really?"

He is a little taken aback at the outburst, though he tries not to show it.

…_confront feelings regarding Dr. Brennan…_

Who does this kid think he is?

The only feelings he feels right now are anger and a little bit of disgust resting in the pit of his stomach. And the guilt that won't seem to go away, despite the fact that she's sitting next to him, legs crossed and clearly alive.

They are silent for a moment before she speaks.

"I have something to say."

"Christ." He is exasperated. Why can't she keep her mouth shut? Why is that so damn hard? She had no trouble keeping her mouth shut when she was dead. And now, suddenly, she has something to say?

She turns to him and as much as he tries not to look at her, he can't really help it. He never could, with her.

Her body is angled towards his, her eyes greener than normal and he can see her fighting the urge to touch him.

"Booth, I am sorry you are upset at me for simply doing what the FBI asked and not telling you that I was not dead."

"That's a crappy apology, Bones."

She throws her hands in the air.

"It's the truth. I don't know what else I can say to convince you to forgive me."

"How about you're sorry for pretending to be dead? You're sorry for not giving me a courtesy 'Hey Booth, guess what, I'm alive' call?"

"But that would be a lie. I am not sorry for not calling you. I _am_ sorry that it upset you, but if I were put in that position again, I would not change my actions."

"See that, Sweets? No remorse. Isn't that the mark of a sociopath?"

"Dr. Brennan is not a sociopath."

"Coulda fooled me."

"That's enough, Agent Booth."

He is surprised by the sternness in his voice. Figures Sweets'd pick on him. The guy never liked him to begin with.

"The real issue here is not that you are angry-"

"Of course the issue is that I'm angry."

"-it's that you were hurt when Dr. Brennan died."

"She didn't die. She's right there. Not dead. Therefore, no hurt."

"Agent Booth, you displayed some very powerful emotions when you discovered that Dr. Brennan was alive at the funeral. I think they merit discussion."

He's talking about the kiss.

Man, that kiss.

It's too bad Bones is a sociopath (and he doesn't kiss sociopaths), because she really is a great kisser.

"Yeah, well, it was a mistake. It's not going to happen again, so you can just butt out."

If he didn't know her as well as he did, he might think that the look that crosses her face is one of hurt. But it's Bones, so it's not.

"Booth, you are overreacting."

She speaks for the first time in several minutes and he remembers how much he missed her voice when she was gone. How he wanted to pick up the phone and talk to her, but couldn't. How he just wanted to hear her tell him one more time about anthropological inevitabilities and fractured femurs and _Jesus was a man who, according to folklore, rose from the dead after three days. That fits the commonly accepted definition of "zombie." _

She was dead; he's not overreacting, not even a little bit.

"Oh yeah? What would you have done if it'd been me?"

"I would have understood, rationally, and accepted that you had no choice in the matter."

"That's crap, Bones. You would've sent me right back into the hospital, you'd be so mad."

"Would not."

"Would too."

"Would not."

"Guys?" Sweets looks at them. "Agent Booth? Are you glad that Dr. Brennan is alive?"

"What? What, Sweets, what kind of question is that? Of course I am."

"And isn't that the important part?"

"Exactly."

"I'm getting to you. Dr. Brennan."

"Oh."

"How would you feel if Agent Booth died?"

"I would rather not think about that."

"Why not?"

"Because it is a moot question. Booth is clearly fine, and speculation accomplishes nothing."

He huffs in exasperation.

"Dr. Brennan."

It sounds like a warning.

"Fine. I imagine it would be very unpleasant."

"It was more than unpleasant, Bones."

He doesn't know why he admits this to her or where his anger went (it's still there, but no longer piping hot at the surface and he wonders why) but she turns to face him and he sees her for maybe the first time since those first moments in the graveyard.

She is sorry and she wants to make things right between them.

It's not enough, but it's a start.

-----

It is a week later and she thinks that maybe things are starting to mend.

After their session with Sweets, the topic of her fake-death does not come up again.

Like so many things (their mistletoe kiss, the "line," the times he's saved her and she's saved him), she puts it away into the file of Things They Don't Talk About.

They get a case, they work it, examining bones and motives and suspects and victims. It's not the same as it was, but it's tolerable.

They don't go to the diner.

They don't have a beer at his place.

She misses him.

She misses them.

They hear it on a Thursday and he jerks the SUV over to the side of the road, throws it into park, and pounds his fist against the steering wheel.

He shuts off the radio before Cyndi Lauper can get to the chorus, and he doesn't look at her.

She isn't quite sure how to react.

They sit in silence for several long minutes before he speaks.

She knows that he is thinking about it because she is thinking about it too. About the music and the dancing and the laughter. About girls having fun and about the searing pain through her abdomen as the bullet entered her.

There is so much about that night that she remembers, and it comes back to her with the phantom chords echoing from the silent speakers.

"It was my fault, Bones."

She knows what he is talking about.

She wishes he would look at her instead of staring at the steering wheel but he looks ahead as he speaks.

"It's my fault that you got shot."

Her head shakes of its own volition and now he turns his head to face her and she can see the pain there, pain that she caused.

She feels her heart clench, and the urge to kiss him surprises her, as though she could take away the past three weeks with the touch of her lips to his.

She doesn't, even though she knows now what it feels like, how his kiss affects her, causes a reaction in her that she can't quite pass off as anthropological.

"That's ridiculous."

"Don't you get it, Bones?" Harsh. Rough. Choked out.

Remain rational. Rationality defines everything, fixes everything.

"It's very simple, Booth, of course I understand. I was shot because Pam-"

"You were shot because of me. Me, Bones."

"That is illogical, Booth. You were not the one who pulled the trigger-"

"I might as well have! She shot you because of how I look at you."

This gives her pause. He looks at her the same way she looks at him. There is nothing unusual in the way they regard at each other.

"I don't know what that means, Booth."

"She shot you because of how I look at you, how I've looked at you practically every day since I met you."

They are facing each other now, bodies angled as the traffic passes them in whooshes and sirens.

His words are anguished and the pain is evident. She may not be able to read people, but she can read him. But she can't remove his pain until she understands, and his words do not make sense.

"I still don't know what that means. How do you look at me?"

"Like I'm in love with you."

And it is out there and it is huge and they are silent.

He is in love with her.

She is not as afraid as she always thought she would be.

Finally, she speaks.

"It is logically improbable that Pam Nunan could deduce your feelings for me by merely observing the way you were looking at me. There are too many variables when it comes to human emotions. Where she saw love, another person could have seen contempt or friendship or any number of other things."

He says nothing. He doesn't confirm and he doesn't deny the admission that hangs in the air, hot and heavy and life-altering.

"It's not your fault, Booth."

A beat.

"It's okay if you love me."

He looks at her, surprised.

She isn't sure she's ready to do this, to say this.

But he looks at her and she knows that she has to, so she does.

"Our time apart gave me the opportunity to consider our relationship, and I have come to the conclusion that coffee is inadequate as a means of defining ourselves."

"What?"

"Coffee. You told Sweets once that, were we to no longer work together, our relationship would exist in meetings over cups of coffee. I no longer find this acceptable."

"And how would you define our relationship, Bones?"

"I am not yet certain."

He waits for her. He is always waiting for her.

She doesn't want to wait anymore.

(Because, really, a madwoman could come along any minute and take everything and life is just as ephemeral as love and that somehow makes the latter less intimidating.)

She takes a deep breath.

"Although you know I reject the traditional ideas on love and monogamy, I am not immune to their appeal, nor ignorant of their persuasiveness. I understand how people can be led to believe that they can achieve happiness with one person for an extended period of time, possibly spanning one's entire life."

His surprise registers in his facial features and she suspects it's a good thing.

"Oh?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"I have experienced it myself, with you. Though I know that it is illogical and unlikely, I cannot, at the moment, imagine the feelings I have for you dissipating or vanishing under any conceivable circumstance. It is puzzling."

A pause. A smile. His hand closing over hers.

"I love you too, Bones."

"I didn't say that."

"I know."

She leans over and kisses him. It's not as wild and frenzied as their last kiss, but it's a good kiss, a good place to begin.

He starts the car and they drive the rest of the way to the lab in silence.

They pull into the parking lot.

"I still haven't forgiven you."

He is grinning, presumably to soften the harshness of his words, but she can still see the truth in them. He hasn't forgiven her yet. She hasn't forgiven herself. But they will get there.

"I missed you too, Booth."

"You did?"

"Of course. When an individual is removed from his or her familiar environment and society, it is only natural to experience feelings of loss."

He laughs.

"Okay, Bones."

Their moment is interrupted by Zack tapping on the window of the SUV.

Booth growls and rolls it down.

"Dr. Brennan, you might want to come in to the lab. You have a package."

She nods.

"Okay, Zack, we'll be right there."

He hesitates a moment.

"Dr. Brennan, your package is bleeding. Dr. Hodgins believes it is from Gormogon."

She looks at her partner.

Back to work. They have a serial killer to catch; the rest will wait.

-----


End file.
